Our house build officially started on November 7th. To set the scene our house is going to be two storey designed by AP of course. The living will be upstairs with a big outdoor deck to take in the beautiful views and downstairs will be the guest room, games/entertaining room with another outdoor area including Sharkey’s bar in memory of my brother Kev. So we are able to live there into our old age we are future proofing it and putting in a lift – which will be put into good use until then I am sure. Al and myself will be doing as much of the building work as we can but we also have Smithy (Daryl Smith) from Coalgate who is both a builder and fireman. He will be around to keep us on track.

The beginning of the house build was the excavation and Backfill Conveyers were back to excavate the site and a lot of excess dirt and stones were removed but many rocks retained for our garden rock wall. There were also many treasures found including an unexpected septic tank, 5 engine blocks plus more bottles and an old miners pick. By the end of that week we had the site prepped for the foundations. The foundations were a new system Al had seen called “Quickset” which instead of traditional timber boxing and pegs, this system uses self supporting shutters that stay in place. Bevan from Quickset came over for a couple of days to make sure all went well. We were also using a new Pod System called Q-Pod which were all made out of recycled plastic and old car bumpers, these are an alternative to the usual polystyrene pods. With Bevan and local builder Scott Secker’s help it didn’t take long to have it all boxed ready for concrete.

But then the rain started and it rained and rained and then rained some more (yes we know it’s the coast!). But finally the day came that all the ducks were lined up and we were getting concrete poured. Everybody arrived as expected – the pump truck (based in Nelson), the concrete placers (local) and the concrete trucks of course were local and Smithy also managed to make it which was great because in his own words ‘I speak Concrete Placer’. What a great crew they all were though and did a great job, and yes Smithy can speak Concrete Placer, and not many of those words can be written here. To see a finished slab was a welcome sight, especially for Al who had been dreaming of this day after many sleepless nights hoping the slab would be in for the scheduled delivery of steel framing.

The steel beams arrived along with the ground floor precut frames and all of the loose timber for the job. We managed to stack it all around the site. Smithy was available for the day so once the steel was up it was straight into standing the frames. We started with the external walls which were heavy as %^*# (Concrete Placer Speak) but we got through it. Then the next day we stood most of the internal frames and straightened the walls, but like any day on the coast it began to rain, and rain hard. We decided to call time at noon on Friday with most of the house frames up. Smithy has left us the job of straightening the walls and putting in the hold down bolts, to which we will be judged upon his return.

Now you are all up to date, sorry for the long post, we will be a little bit more regular from now on.

Onto the next stage